How do organizations develop systemically abusive leadership?
Often it starts with one small step . . . or maybe a giant step.
Such was the case of Saul and Doeg. This was a partnership founded in abhorrent leadership.
Saul was the first king of Israel. He rose to leadership under questionable circumstances. The public “elected” him for foolish motives, not unlike current affairs. He acted against many of the leadership principles God had given for Israel in Deuteronomy 171.
So, the systemic leadership abuse began in the motivations that drove Israel to seek a king. They wanted to be “like all the nations” around them (1 Samuel 82). If those nations had been good, that would have been one thing. But, that was not the case. They were known for oppression to the extent that they offered their own children up in sacrifice to their gods.
When this is your model, it is unlikely the resulting state will be good.
Then Doeg
After time things went from bad to worse. This progression is typical according to the stories in Scripture. Organizational research by Barbara Kellerman suggests the same pattern. I have referenced her before.
In 1st Samuel 22, King Saul is seeking out David. David was his servant and the future king of Israel. Saul sought to kill him because of his jealousy. While David is running from Saul he came across a priest named Ahimelech. Ahimelech provided provisions for David and his followers.
This is where the story gets interesting and rather gory.
King Saul discovered Ahimelech’s aid to David and challenged Ahimelech for helping him. The priest responded plausibly to the king.
“And who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king’s son-in-law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house? 15 Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No! Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.”
1 Samuel 22:14b-15
Saul suggested that Ahimelech should have known David was rebelling against Saul. However, David was not rebelling. Saul also suggested that Ahimelech should have refused to aid David and his men.
Ahimelech was fully in the right under the circumstances that David was simply running from Saul, not rebelling against him. Keep in mind that the king was supposed to be under the spiritual direction and care of the priests. Still, listen to the foolish King Saul.
And the king said, “You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father’s house.” 17 And the king said to the guard who stood about him, “Turn and kill the priests of the LORD, because their hand also is with David, and they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.”
The guard was in a pretty horrible position.
He was asking himself, “Do I do what my authority has told me to do? Or do I follow my conscience?”
The guard, who remains unnamed in Scripture and is an unsung hero, has integrity. He refuses to do the king’s bidding. He refuses to murder David.
That doesn’t stop Saul.
Then the king said to Doeg, “You turn and strike the priests.” And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod. 19 And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep, he put to the sword.
Doeg obeyed the king. And he obeyed with gusto forever to be known as a serial murderer.
Complicity
But it is not simply murders for which he is known. His complicity kept King Saul on his self-serving path of toxic leadership.
Complicity with a toxic leader can have long-term and deepening effects. Refusing to comply can cost your life, as it did the guard. Still, this is awfully unlikely in most places in this day and age. Complicity just isn’t worth it.
Barbara Kellerman tells the story of Goebbels in Nazi Germany:
Hitler’s most ardent disciple from the start was, arguably, Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels. As conditions in Germany began deteriorating, with the Allies closing in, Goebbels remained close to the leader—straight through to the end: Shortly after the führer committed suicide, Goebbels took the most radical diehard-type step when he and his wife took their lives along with those of their six children. Without Hitler, they considered life not worth living.
Kellerman, Barbara, ‘What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers’, Harvard Business Review, 2007
Because this story comes from the history of Nazi leadership we are readily disgusted by Goebbels’ loyalty to Hitler. Nonetheless, it merely illustrates a large group of followers of toxic leaders. These followers are in our churches, organizations, governments, and businesses.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of evil, they stay faithful to the leader.
Yes-Men Not Welcome Here
In Kellerman’s work she is arguing that wise leaders look out for this loyalty. She warns against welcoming those who will stand with you—a leader—no matter what befalls. There must be those who challenge a leader who is unwisely leading. Thus, a yes-man is not a welcome subordinate to the good leader.
The leader recognizes, in humility, that they need the pushback non-complicit subordinates provide.
Kellerman also tells of “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, former CEO of Scott Paper and Sunbeam. She described him as “mean” and “creating a culture of tyranny and misery.” She says it was a story of participants and activists who acted. The trouble was they supported the leader. And leader did not deserve their support.
In Kellerman’s typology, “participants and activists” are those who act complicitly with the leader, good or bad. According to her research, they have a real impact on the direction the organization takes. In essence, she is confirming what we see throughout Scripture.
Many of the narratives found there are not simply about a bad leader. They are about those who bowed down. They provided the necessary support for those bad leaders to simply get worse. Or at least create a greater hell for the organization until run out of power.
When faced with that choice of following a toxic leader or not, make the firm choice to not be a do[e]g. I certainly can empathically hear the stories of those who feel there was no way around it. This is because I have been there. Sometimes the pressure is great.
But, God calls us to a higher calling.
Notes
- Deuteronomy 17:14-20 (ESV) “When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16 Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ 17 And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. 18 “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, 20 that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. ↩︎
- 1 Samuel 8:4-7 (ESV) Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. ↩︎